


Pagan of the Good Times

by musiclily88



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Anxiety, Blow Jobs, Depression, Divorce, Divorces, F/M, M/M, Married Couple, Married Life, Married Sex, Oral Sex, Post-Divorce, Separation, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 16:17:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1905564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and Louis are a story for the ages, but sometimes they panic. They panic sometimes, when Louis worries and Harry retreats:<br/>A divorce fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pagan of the Good Times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alison](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alison/gifts).



> I love you. xx
> 
> Title from Hozier’s “Take Me to Church,” which Neon Jungle does a lovely cover of, as well.  
> And yeah I made a reference to that fucking wheelbarrow poem. Sorry.
> 
> ALISON I DUNNO WHO YOU ARE TECHNICALLY but if this isn't to your taste I'll write something different. All your prompts were darling, but this one spoke to me. -S

Harry was running twenty minutes late for a custody mediation meeting, meaning he was flat-out running down the carpeted corridor, feet thudding and loud. He felt breathless and cursed himself as he barged into the meeting room.

“Ah, there he is,” Louis said blandly, eyebrows high underneath his fringe.

“Just a little bit late, is all. There was a dust-up on the drive over here, something to do with the royal family? Traffic was a bit of a bear, is what I’m trying to say,” he added, trailing off when he heard Louis heave a sigh. “Never mind.”

“That’s all right. Just take a seat and we can begin,” said their mediator Ms. Torres—Sasha, as she had repeatedly and insistently reminded him—gesturing to the other side of the long conference table.

His manoeuver to sit down, of course, required him to cross the room. He flushed, feeling clumsy and spotlit. He momentarily prepared himself for the next ninety minutes, knowing he had to steel himself for it every time he endured it. He hated it desperately, wanted to claw at his neck and shoulders and collarbones just for a ƒ from the slow-building frustration that wormed its way through his chest. He had to listen to near-strangers debate his own fitness to care for his children, his own babies, little Silas and long-limbed Tala. As if he wouldn’t do anything, absolutely anything, to make them happy or to ensure that they knew they were loved. To think he needed help putting their best interests first.

Worse yet, he had to sit across from Louis, from _his_ Louis, from the goddamn love of his life, and pretend that he wasn’t breaking completely apart. So he squelched down the warm, sick betrayal that was spreading through his gut, tamped it down next to the bubbling rage and infinite sadness.

Today’s session was about some ridiculous relationship timeline, charting the trajectory and tragedy of their marriage. _Marriage,_ as if that was something that could just suddenly come to an end. But somehow it had. It had ended as it began, bright and white-hot like a supernova, a star collapsing in on itself. 

Two people collapsing in on themselves and each other, causing misery to the people they loved the most. So much relied on them—on their love—that thinking about it made Harry choke. _so much depends upon a—_ he muttered to himself, his thoughts littered with bits of lyrics and poetry and movie quotes that popped up at the worst of times. Something about a wheelbarrow, maybe? He ought to check with Zayn. Zayn would know.

“What was that?” Louis asked quietly. That was the way things were with them, now. Louis was quiet, and reserved, and polite. He tiptoed around Harry in the worst possible way, as if he was afraid of him. What if Louis was afraid of him?

“I wasn’t—no, it’s nothing.”

“Would you like to add anything, Harry?” Sasha looked at him with expectant curiosity. Consummate professional that she was, she treated both Harry and Louis the same, although Harry thought he got a flicker of pity every time she looked him directly in the eyes. “About the early timeline of your relationship?”

What was there to say that hadn’t already been iterated and reiterated a thousand times? Their every experience was catalogued on film, in song, and via wildly imaginative fan fiction. Every version of their lives existed somewhere, and yet this was the one he was living. They were living this together, which meant they were apart and much worse off.

Really, what was there to say about the early days? The chance encounter in a _goddamn toilet_ that everyone seemed to find just as amusing as they themselves did. Being so convinced and enamored of one another’s talent, of one another’s most basic _presence_ as to forget absolutely everyone else in the room. Even in packed stadiums, even competing for a chance at the very career they had spent so long trying to achieve, they caught one another’s eyes and perked up their ears and paid attention to every damn word the other said.

Was there a comprehensive way to tell a stranger they had been signing the word _forever_ at one another in front of millions since they were teenagers? Was there a polite, rational way to tell someone that Harry had never stopped believing it?

And now he could barely get his husband to look him in the eye. Louis just sat meekly across the table from him, _meekly,_ when before that was not a word that Louis would even know the definition of.

Maybe that was a little mean.

But fuck it, Harry was _feeling_ a little mean. He so rarely indulged in the meanness, in the dark bit inside him that was very, very angry. And even that got thrown back into his face sometimes, the fact that he didn’t want to _fight._ He had enough fighting, really, his childhood had been filled with other people fighting and when it came from his parents—two of the people he loved unequivocally, who were supposed to love one another just the same, forever—it had been intolerable.

Harry hated fighting in front of the kids, refused to do it mostly. And maybe the times he did indulge were the worst ones.

Things were different than they used to be, and somehow, they hadn’t been able to adapt.

They had adapted to the secrecy, the cloak-and-dagger game of fulfilling their management team’s every desire. It was electric, even, as if they still had something private that the world couldn’t grab onto. They had their love and only the important people knew about it. For a while, that had been enough.

It was Harry who pushed to come out, when the catcalls and the womanizing-tease-flirt-slut rumours grew too loud. When every tabloid near every till in every grocery store and off-license had photos of _him_ with big red circles pointing out the love bites that Louis had given him, splashed with speculation about Harry’s newest conquest.

That was a fight Harry had been willing to have.

Maybe somewhere along the line, the fight had just—gone out of him, a bit, the pressures of _fame and stardom_ finally beating him down. His mood, his attitude, his energy, his attention lagged. And Louis had taken that as tacit that Harry no longer wanted to fight for _him. Try,_ like three letters could fix fifteen years of terrifying love and an abrupt, soul-churning kick to the stomach. Like Harry had ever done anything else—trying was easy, but it didn’t matter if he just kept failing. Trying wasn’t the half of it. Trying was _nothing._

“Oh.”

Louis sighed again. He was going grey around the temples, greying classically actually, and Harry thought of all the times Louis had asked him to kiss those spots, to remind Louis he still loved him. He would never stop loving Louis, and he wished Louis hadn’t stopped wanting his kisses.

He wanted to make a self-deprecating, off-colour joke, something like _I’m mentally younger than Tala, Lou, give me explicit instructions, use small words,_ but he knew it would only have fallen flat.

“Make sure Si goes to bed early tonight, yeah? He’s still getting over that cold.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“And you get some sleep, too, okay?”

The topic had a worn-out quality to it, rutted like a dirt road, like something they would have driven down one of the many times they had planned one-off trips to tiny towns in foreign countries. 

They both distinctly remembered the dark weeks, the endless, tedious collection of bedridden days and nights where Harry curled uselessly around a hot water bottle and couldn’t leave the house. It coincided with his panic about going _anywhere_ he could get mobbed, after a particularly terrifying experience outside an afternoon recording session. He’d had to cradle Silas in the middle of a pap-brawl while his baby was having an asthma attack and, hyperbole aside, Harry sometimes marveled that they had gotten out alive. 

The frightened malaise stretched out before him and Louis, both of them outright lying to their children about why Pops was so tired, everyone trying to full-family snuggle Harry to make him feel better.

No one said _depression_ until Harry’s doctor said depression, and that was months after Louis had moved out and claimed the kids. Thankfully Harry had been able to rebound enough to barter time with them, to get well enough that not everything could be stripped from him. He got out of bed and took his pills and loved, flat-out _adored_ his children.

And none of it seemed like quite enough, not for Louis to be convinced. Sometimes that hurt just as much as the initial leaving, or even the first bit of _I need to stay in bed because the world is a dangerous place, don’t you understand?_

All that Louis seemed to get was that Harry was somehow keeping something from him and endangering their babies. He felt excluded and alone and lonely, shut out from everything important and vital, he had said.

And Harry had no room to defend himself. He _had_ shut Louis out, he had broken down, he hadn’t put their marriage or their children first. Louis had been right at every turn, at least in those things.

The months since that initial separation—that hushed conversation when Louis had said he’d rented a flat nearby and was taking the kids for everyone’s own good, at least for awhile—amounted to a heavy, grey trek up a _very_ steep hill. It amounted to a lot of commotion, to Zayn and Perrie minding the kids while Niall goaded Harry into the shower and to the doctor while Louis packed up just enough of his things that Harry felt even more devastated.

 _My husband left me because I got depressed_ was too simplistic and anyway, it wasn’t the whole truth. Harry didn’t know what the whole truth was, but he thought it might come down to secrets—to tiny, unvoiced truths that got in the way of their daily _stuff._ Louis had kept quiet about things too, of course, about how tiresome he had come to find fame—not the fans, never them but the endless meetings and consultations and long hours away from his family. He hadn’t admitted how he wanted to produce, rather than perform. Their separation meant a lot of things—hiatus for _One Direction,_ free time for Louis to come to grips with what he really wanted, and space from the boy he’d loved since he was eighteen.

Depression was the impetus, but it might not be the thing that kept them apart.

What if Louis liked freedom more than he liked Harry? _What if he met someone else?_

Gentle nightmares eked into Harry’s brain each night, tucked up again with a hot water bottle for lack of Louis in his arms. He awoke dazed but _functioning,_ he was functioning these days, and writing long snippets of songs he would probably never show the boys. He hummed Silas to sleep at night with new lyrics just behind his teeth, murmured soft words to Tala as he combed through her wet hair.

Months upon months had gone by, both “separation” and “divorce” bandied about repeatedly—but never by Harry. He would wait and eventually figure out what to do. For now he accumulated information and held his own and tried to atone for the heavy blanket of secrets that had fallen over them both.

***  
Zayn or Perrie still sat for the kids when Harry and Louis were busy—not that they couldn’t hire help, but both preferred someone they knew. Liked. Trusted.

Perrie joked about it being a trial run for their own kids, which always made Zayn blanche. Tala adored Perrie both for her musical talents and her ridiculous assortment of hair products. She regularly brought over hair chalk and clip-in extensions when she watched them. Silas, quieter than Tala by half, usually submitted to having his fingernails painted, although he much preferred when Zayn brought some art supplies.

Whenever Harry went to the doctor, someone accompanied him, and although he favoured Louis, more often than not Niall went with him. Niall felt a sense of personal responsibility for them, was the first to really know they were together; he rooted for them harder than anyone. Harry enjoyed the sunlit presence of Niall, enjoyed his easy smiles and ready pats to the back, plus it was helpful to have another ear out for possible side effects and drug interactions.

To therapy, Harry usually went alone. Sometimes, though, Louis went with him, face grave as Harry talked about symptoms and moods and the progress he was making. And he _was_ making progress, as far as he could tell. He just didn’t know what was enough, where the defining line of _okay_ was. Therapy was easier than mediation because he didn’t feel quite so patently judged for some perceived wrongdoing. Rather for the first time in his life he was made to feel he was approaching _normal._ He took a certain pride in it.

He talked about mundane things, the most important things: Tala’s fear of the dark, Silas’ serious peanut allergy, his own flagging sex drive, his true and genuine fear that Louis no longer loved him, his desire to be remembered as more than just a pretty face. He felt particularly inarticulate when trying to describe the way fame had come to define him.

At the end of the session on one particular Tuesday, he shrugged into a light jacket and beanie—he might be a father but he could still play at a rebellious popstar some of the time—marvelling, as ever, at how linked-up his love life was with his job and to his best friends. He wondered just how he had managed to let so many people down.

He spotted Louis idling behind the wheel of the Range Rover and startled slightly. Then he jogged forward, inexplicably worried that Louis might leave without him.

“Hi. I wasn’t—wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know.” Harry clambered in, tucking his long legs into the passenger side. “I figured we could go for a drive.”

“Yes please.” Harry pulled one leg up beneath his backside, propping the other on the dash, aware of the dirt on the bottom of his boot just a few moments too late. He pursed his lips and exhaled sharply through his nose. “Are we going anywhere specific?”

“No, just around. We should—can we talk?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m not all talked out yet. Take me for a ride.” He leaned, pushing back with the leg he’d propped on the dash, hoping for all the world that he was reading this situation correctly. And shouldn’t he have been able to? Didn’t he know Louis’ body better than he knew his own name, his own damn reflection? Couldn’t he read every flicker across Louis’ face? Didn’t he know just about every goddamn thing there was to know?

He didn’t. And where that had once been charming, interesting, lately it felt—dangerous. 

“What do you want to talk about?” Harry asked, verging on twitchy with the discomfort of the conversation. He wasn’t getting a _bad_ read from Louis, knew nothing was terminally wrong with a family member, knew the kids were doing okay. So it must have been about them. It made him anxious. “What—” He cleared his throat and tied again. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I—babes, I just—what did I _do wrong?”_

And Harry then, like a one-off felt like sobbing. “No, I keep trying to—it’s not you, it’s everyone and everything else, and it’s me. It’s not you, it’s never _you._ It’s this stuff in my head and chest, it’s just—you’re the only thing outside of it, you and the kids. You’re the _calm._ It’s _me.”_

Louis clenched tight around the steering wheel, jaw working slowly as his tongue ran over his top teeth. “It’s—it’s not—”

“It’s not you, wasn’t you.”

“Then why just—why didn’t you fight? If it wasn’t me.”

“Because it was me, and you were right to go. I was a—a danger, I wasn’t right, couldn’t—you deserve better, so you were right, but I can figure it out.”

“Figure it out?”

“Figure out what I need to do to make you love me again.”

_“Haz.”_

“No, it’s fine. Onus on me. I’ll figure it out and it’ll be okay, we’ll be right again.”

“That’s not—no, that was never what I meant, I just wanted you to _try_ again.”

“I never stopped trying. It just stopped making a _difference.”_

Louis frowned, sharp lines cutting into his cheeks. Almost wrinkles. “No. I—it was just that I couldn’t watch you fall out of love with me, and couldn’t bear for the—for our _children_ not to love me.”

“They’ll always love you. And I’ll never stop, I won’t.”

“Haz.” 

“Won’t. It will never go away, and neither will I. It—it was _you_ who went away, Lou, and that fucking hurts.”

“You were lying to me, or you were something, but you weren’t fucking _talking!_ I couldn’t do anything _else.”_

“You could have done anything else.”

“So could _you_ have. Fucking talked for five minutes even, Christ. What was I honestly supposed to do?”

“Anything.”

“Same could be said,” Louis replied bitterly.

“What can I _do?”_

“Just—try.”

“I am.”

“Keep going.”

***

Louis dropped Harry back at their house, stopping in to say hello to the Tala and Silas, to Zayn and Perrie. He went momentarily stiff, livid, when he saw his daughter—“Chr—God, Haz, I said not to let her pierce her ears!” he crowed, only to be talked down by an eye-rolling Perrie, who assured him the earrings were clip-ons—before shuffling out, vaguely embarrassed and flushed.

Zayn eyed Harry as Perrie hugged Tala and Silas good-bye, communicating caution and brotherhood in that strange, wordless way he had. But then Zayn hugged him, murmuring that Niall was going to stop by with take-away, that he really wanted to play keep-away with Tala and try to tickle Silas til he was sick. Even if part of Harry felt like he was being chaperoned, he still liked the company—or the effort, the work they were putting in to care for him.

He bundled up with Tala and Silas on the sofa, watching their favorite bits of _Grease_ on repeat, partly because Harry and Louis knew the suggestive bits had gone over their _own_ heads as children. Niall called on them two hours later and the kids sped to the door well before Harry could reach it, laughing as he trailed along behind them.

***

Tala and Silas begged to stay up hours past their bedtimes, begged for Niall to chase them around the house, for Harry to fix them chocolate sundaes.

“They’re down, mate,” Harry muttered, re-entering the living room where Niall was watching football highlights and sucking on a Stella.

“K. Come in for a cuddle.” He spread his arms wide and waited for Harry to collapse onto him. “You good?” he huffed out as Harry leapt onto the couch.

“Better than lately. Good now that you’re here.”

Niall grimaced, shaking his head. “Don’t do that, H.”

“Do what?”

“Coddle.”

“M’not.”

“Look, I know I’m a bit of a ray of sunshine. That’s documented. But I’m not the depression cure-all.”

“No. That’s—no. Okay.”

“You can be honest with me. Us.”

“There’s nothing, just—no words. It was everything.”

“Was?”

“Was.”

“And now?”

“On the mend. Getting there. Up and up.”

“Glib.”

“Sorry,” Harry replied, shamefaced. “Sorry, Ni.”

“You’re allowed not to be okay.”

“But I don’t want to be not okay, I want to be okay.”

“You’ll get there.”

“Quick enough? For him, for us all, the five of us? The kids?”

“You’re already doing fine by the kids, you twat, they love you to hell and back. They know you’re trying.”

“And the band?”

Niall shrugged. “What comes’ll come, you know? We’re family no matter what.”

Harry grimaced. “Can one’s ex-husband reasonably be considered _family_ in that context?”

“Haz.”

“What if he—really pulls the trigger? You know, goes through with it all?”

“It takes two people to get divorced.”

“Does it? It only takes one to separate them, apparently.”

***  
Niall spent the night—fell asleep on the couch in an endearing way, reminding Harry of languid naps in the tour bus and in random dressing rooms, group cuddles in hotel beds. Harry covered him with two fuzzy blankets and shut off the light, eyes gritty with the need to sleep. He stripped down to boxer-briefs and slid into bed, placing his mobile beneath the pillow. Then, thinking better of it, he typed out and sent _I miss you. Please come home._

***  
Silas woke in the middle of the night complaining of a sore throat, so Harry heated him some water with honey and lemon. Silas whimpered quietly until nearly dawn, even with a cough suppressant and throat soother, even curled up against Harry’s chest. They dozed until the alarm went off, and Silas mewled when Harry gently shifted his way out of bed.

He showered, dressed, and woke up a bleary-eyed Tala. Then he set off to make breakfast, and he did not cry at all, even though parenting was much, much harder alone. Everything was harder alone.

He started when Niall entered the kitchen, yawning. “Shit, I forgot you slept here,” he muttered, plating some scrambled eggs for Tala. “How’d you want your eggs?”

‘Whatever you’re having,” Niall said, scratching his belly. “Proper loved-up and domestic, aren’t we?”

Harry snorted. “Ni, as much as I love you—and I really, really do—you know it’s not the same.”

“Yeah. I know.”

***  
Harry took Tala to school and stopped into the market to pick up sundries the house was lacking. As soon as he stepped inside the foyer, he caught the soft smell of Louis’ cologne and dropped the bags where he stood.

“Lou?” He tripped forward, stumbling with skinny ankles and heavy boots. Moving to the living room, he stopped short, hammering heart pounding at the base of his throat. Louis sat next to Silas on the long sectional sofa, the latter tucked up beneath his Lion King fleece. “Babes,” he said. Taking in the whole scene, he quickly knelt down beside his boy, thumbing along Silas’ jaw as he grappled fiercely for Louis’ left hand. They were both still wearing their wedding rings.

Harry pressed his lips hard to Louis’ knuckles, smashing his skin more than kissing it. “How are you feeling?” he asked, directing the question to both of them, pleadingly.

“We’re okay,” Louis murmured, tucking the blanket around Silas’ tiny body. “We’re fine.” Harry bent his legs and knelt into the space beside Louis’ feet, shunting his nose into the curve of Louis’ neck. For the first time since entering the house, he truly felt at home.

Harry shifted away and watched Louis tend to Silas with a small sense of distance, wanting on some level to see how they might appear to a stranger. Their lives took on a foreign sense of urgency, like that of an explosion—and Harry was living in the aftermath. From his imposed distance, the explosion looked almost over and done with; stuck in the center of it, though, Harry knew it had a character all its own. The ripples and after-shocks and falling rubble continued to shift, so that Harry had no idea how this might truly end.

 

They put Silas down for a nap before retreating to the master bedroom. Harry heaved a sigh and collapsed onto the bed he’d never made that morning, rubbing his eyes with both hands. Louis moved to the oversized armchair by the window, plucking up a pair of discarded joggers to fold them up. “Poor Si,” he murmured, setting the folded material on top of their dresser. “Being ill is the absolute worst.”

“Especially as a kid. God, I was ten times whinier at his age.” Harry leaned back against the headboard and watched Louis through lowered lashes. “Always wanted ice lollies and hours of cartoons.”

‘You’re still kind of like that, to be fair,” Louis said with a crooked smile, moving to sit in the chair. “The cartoon bit anyway.”

“True.” Harry ran one hand along the rumpled duvet to his left, wishing he had asked Louis to sit beside him. “Glad you’re here now.”

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

“Lou. You’ve been _anywhere_ for months now.”

Louis bit his lip. “And you were for how long before that?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“It was a—I figured it was a wake-up call for me, to see if I was actually any—that I was making you worse, that it was all my fault. Maybe you’d be better off without me, that you were sick of me and the life we were living.” Louis crumpled forward, resting his elbows on the tops of his thighs, exhaling sharply.

“No, it was—no. You’re the _best_ thing that happened to me. Ever. More than the band and the boys and the fans. _Anything._ This was—me. This was only me and my brain and _my_ fears. And it affected _so_ so much and I’m sorry.”

“I thought—if I felt it’d—get better, that I was just nagging and making you worse. And you wouldn’t _talk_ to me.”

“I didn’t talk to anyone. It was the disease, not you. And the only reason I—looked like I got better is because I had to, to get you all back, to get better and bring you home. If I had just—I had no words to say what was wrong because it was _me._ Deep down to the core, and there’s no words for that. To say, the person you love isn’t _worthy_ anymore, that I wasn’t worthy of you at all. And it just—felt like you confirmed it. By leaving.”

Louis snapped his head up, eyes wide. His posture went rigid with panic. “Haz.”

“But you also made me—you shocked me into picking myself up to fight for you, to prove to you that the choice you made in picking me wasn’t _misguided._ I never stopped _trying,_ Lou, but trying means something different when you’re—low. Too scared to leave the house, to have your loved ones leave your sight. I was _stuck._ And I’m sorry.”

“Don’t—”

“Sorry for not at least trying to explain it, at least, for not realizing you were—blaming yourself.”

“It scared me.” His shoulders sagged.

“I’m sorry.”

“I was worried I ruined you, pulled you into something you didn’t—we were just _kids._ You could have gotten tired of me and it made some kind of sense. You’re just—a fucking marvel, and I thought I was tarnishing you.”

“Fuck.” Harry paused, trying to gather the right collection of words. “This is exactly the life I want to be living. You and the kids. And on top, I feel guilty for not being grateful enough, because I genuinely love everything we’ve built together. This isn’t about _you,_ it’s—depression is selfish, my doctor said, and that’s something that made sense, okay, to help me put some words to this shit. It was me. And you were what got me fighting again, okay? That thing you always come back to, that I need to fight, yeah? So here we are.”

“Shit.”

“And like—you didn’t say anything, did you, and I didn’t know what to do with that.”

“I was lonely.”

“I thought you’d met someone else, at first, until Niall actually slapped me for saying that aloud.” Harry huffed out a breath and collapsed backwards, taking a bit of the duvet with him.

“No. No one else.”

“Yeah, I—I worry, though. You _left_ me, and I’m—it wasn’t good. It’s not good, without you. I’ll miss you forever, Lou. Forever.”

“I—I’m so—I thought you, that you didn’t want me anymore.”

“And you just—left?” Harry breathed out, disbelieving even though the evidence was clear and straightforward. “You left me.”

“I had to.” As if that was any kind of explanation. Louis surged to his feet, a determined look plastered on his face, eyes bright. He knelt on the edge of the bed, looking down at Harry with intent. “It—it got you up, didn’t it, and lucid, and—I don’t know. I’m sorry. I never stopped _loving_ you. Christ. Never.”

“That _broke_ me. More than anything. And like—I got up to get you back, to get back to where we were, but I just, fuck, I don’t even know if I can. I don’t know what we can be.”

“Different. Better. That’s—that’s _marriage.”_

“You _signed_ goddamn divorce papers!”

“I—” Louis gaped then shut his mouth with a clack, backing up sharply. He clenched both fists and worked the muscles in his jaw.

“You had them couriered here. Like it—it was just any other day and any other package. Like it was _song lyrics.”_

Louis leaned back in, pressing his lips to Harry’s soft curls, fisting one hand into the worn material of Harry’s ratty t-shirt. “You had—you’d barely talked to me for ages. Months. No more than a grunt and a sigh some days. It wasn’t okay, I needed—drastic—something extreme—”

“Well it worked. But I’m also hurt. And angry as hell.” He scrabbled for Louis’ shirt in return, pulling him onto the bed artlessly, their bodies tangling together face-to-face.

“And I’m _not?”_

Harry flared his nostrils, coughing on air. “Fuck this. _Fuck this._ This sucks. Time out?”

“Time out,” Louis agreed quickly, working his way to his knees. Then he shouldered forward, pressing his chest to Harry’s greedily, darting his eyes up. “Please.” He pressed a hard kiss to Harry’s mouth, lips pursed until he stuck his tongue forcefully inside.

Harry whined without intending to, had missed Louis’ touch and tongue. He hadn’t been kissed in months. It was wearing on him—everything was. All of it.

He shot his tongue harshly against Louis’ and scrabbled his hand into Louis’ hips. He pressed into the small bit of fat there (Louis hated his ages-old baby fat and Harry loved it) and forced their bodies together, pelvis-to-pelvis, chest-to-chest. Louis sucked in a breath as Harry tried to be—aggressive, though that wasn’t usually the role he played.

“I love you,” Harry muttered, shunting his hips forward against Louis’ groin.

“You—you too.”

“Say it.”

“I love you too,” Louis said with a shudder—a shudder Harry could almost _hear._ It made him consider things and reconsider even more. It made his mouth water, but then most things Louis did made Harry’s mouth water, even caring for their children and taking out the recycling.

Harry undid Louis’ fly with practised ease—he knew Louis and Louis’ body and nearly all of Louis’ _extensive_ wardrobe—and ground their bodies together again, trying to pace himself unsuccessfully. He sighed to himself and stuffed a hand into Louis’ pants, the elastic pressing against his wrist gently. 

He planted his thumb against the slick slit of Louis’ cock, which was already leaking pre-come. He rubbed the head carelessly, quickly, wanting to wank Louis to full hardness so they could _fuck_ already. He missed his husband and he missed sex and he missed casual intimacy—simple things like a kiss on the forehead during breakfast, a hand on the small of his back as they walked. Everything ached when he thought on it, so instead he focused on the uncut cock in his hand, attached unceremoniously to his _spouse._

“Say it again,” he said, half command and half request. Not that he was dominant, precisely, but Louis had a way of—or had previously had a way of—accommodating him. No, Louis was typically toppier, aggressive, forward. Harry knew how to sit back and wait, knew how to lure people in and make them think it was _their_ idea. He’d done it to Louis as a teenager and he’d only gotten better at it with time.

Harry knew how to flirt just teasingly enough to start the inevitable onslaught that was Louis when horny. For a time—a very long time, in fact—that had been enough to sustain them. It had lasted through their teenage years, through the years they had needed to hide and could only manage covert glances and tiny, pursed-lip smiles onstage. Plausible deniability and undercover flirting had seen them through a lot.

So Harry knew plenty about taunting and teasing, knew which stretches of skin to prod and caress, knew how to flick his fingers just so, knew how to make Louis actually growl at him. He had experience and he had a tenacity—a single-mindedness—that was known to intimidate. When joking, Louis had been known to refer to Harry’s gaze as a _serial killer stare,_ and Harry was rarely reluctant to agree.

He leveled a hooded gaze on Louis and licked his lips. He continued toying with the head of Louis dick, eyeing him heatedly. This was something he could do, and though it didn’t amount to fighting, it did amount to—effort. Expressing his love in physicality was rote, given their history and their way-without-words relationship, their stupid fumbling touches throughout adolescence, their flirty interactions during interviews and concerts and meet-and-greets. He had learned to use his words along the way, but he routinely returned to what worked. And he and Louis had never had problems physically.

Harry planted one hand against Louis’ hip, steadying him gently but firmly. He worked his other hand with increasing speed, listening to the pace of Louis’ breath pick up speed. He circled his thumb, spreading the slick pre-come onto the pliant tip, gently moving back the surrounding skin.

“Fuck.” Louis’ eyelids fluttered shut.

Harry smiled but bit his lip over it. “Already so hard for me.”

“Al-always for you,” Louis agreed slowly, stuttering out the syllables.

Harry hummed and shook his head but ducked down to press his open lips to the spots his thumb vacated, trailing along behind. He gently darted his tongue outward, teasing, flitting, knowing precisely what he was doing.

If Louis was under the impression that this was going to be gentle for long, he was about to be disabused of it. Quick and dirty and spitty, this was going to be, and if it went any further, Harry wasn’t—in the place to make himself vulnerable, had already had enough _opening up_ for one day, would rather bite than be bitten right now. He might have been on his knees and halfway to deepthroating, but he wasn’t making himself _any_ more prostrate than that.

Harry snorted to himself at the word “prostrate,” because even as an adult with two kids, a career, and a husband, he still thought a lot of words sounded dirty.

“What?”

Harry sucked quickly against the head of Louis’ cock before pulling off for a moment. “Dirty pun,” he explained before ducking back in, sucking Louis deeper into his mouth, preparing to take him down deep.

“N-not gonna share?” Louis stuttered, eyelids fluttering shut despite himself, despite everything, it might seem. Harry considered the fact that Louis was actually responding to his noises, his prompts—his murmurings, even. Instead of responding vocally, he bore down, taking Louis’ cock past his gag reflex and soft palate. He sucked on Louis like he might die without him, and maybe hadn’t he? A little? Hadn’t he died without his husband?

That thought rattled through his skull, rolled around in his head like it was relevant, and it _had_ been relevant for the past forever, for a long time. Since the forever that Louis had left him. Harry hadn’t properly lived since then, and he hated the world for it, but not so much as he hated himself.

Just as quickly as he had forced his way down, he retreated, fisting the base of Louis’ cock. He twisted his hand to take up what was no longer in his mouth. With precision, he tongued at the slit, making circles and crisscrosses with the tip of it. He was gratified with Louis gasped anew. He scrabbled one hand against Harry’s shoulder, trying to find purchase where there was none. He tucked two fingers into the thin material of the t-shirt, wrapping the fabric tightly around his digits.

Harry moved his other fist to Louis’ thigh to force him steady—not that he was bucking at all, more to allow him a feeling of control than anything else. This was something he was going to _take_ from Louis, and he felt horribly greedy for even having the thought. But he needed it, needed the sense of power and purpose and ownership. He needed to feel he’d _earned_ something—and sure that came with a modicum of ceding to someone else, but Louis at his most vulnerable was worth some small loss of power. Hell, being the one to bring a titan to his knees, well, maybe that was a victory of its own.

And should he really have been thinking in terms of winning and losing when so much was at stake? When the loss of a family, a lifestyle, a husband was so very, frighteningly close? Wasn’t that petty? Was he petty to be worried about _besting_ Louis, the one who was in his head and heart and fucking _veins_ every single second of his miserable existence?

It _felt_ petty. But Harry hated feeling so assaulted by powerlessness that he was giving himself a few moments of selfishness in the form of taking dick like a professional.

He moaned slightly, knowing the vibration would pass up straight to Louis’ groin, straight to the center of him. Louis’ fingers tightened in the fabric of Harry’s t-shirt, his other hand carding through his own hair endlessly—like he couldn’t believe his own _dumb luck._

Harry moved his mouth back, off of Louis, who whined. “This isn’t a, like, reward or something, I just—”

“I know. It’s—I love you.” Louis clenched his jaw, eyes watery and bright.

Harry nodded and replaced his mouth where it had been—where it _belonged_ —and relished the slick feeling on his lips, spit mixing with pre-come. He twisted again at the base of Louis’ dick, moving his head in the opposite direction, lips suctioning at the head. Louis swore loudly, throwing one hand behind him to grasp the slatted headboard, which—fair, they’d purchased it precisely for sexual reasons. 

Their cuffs and toys and related apparel hadn’t been used in more than a year, all of it probably tacky with dust, lube, and sadness. (No, Harry was simply being maudlin about their disuse, surely; he always made sure to appropriately clean and store his toys, lest they cause an infection. Because above all else, he was a goddamn gentleman.) He’d had no real desire to dig them out of the closet since Louis had left, not for use by himself. He’d resorted to quick shower wanking that let him pretend his face was wet from something _besides_ tears.

Harry held down Louis’ thigh harder, forcing him to stay immobile as he pistoned his other hand and lapped very gently, teasingly light, at just the tip of Louis’ cock. “Christ, H, you just—you’re just so—fuck.” Harry hummed, enjoying the way Louis shivered with the vibration. “Miss you so much, miss you all the time, missed _us._ It’s not the same, nothing’s the _same,”_ Louis babbled, and Harry felt like he was taking something by force, like he had duped Louis somehow.

Instead of analyzing it he took a deep breath and removed his hand, opening his throat to take Louis down deep once more. Louis simultaneously groaned and convulsed, fingers going still tighter around the wooden slat of the headboard. Harry gagged slightly, reminding himself to breathe, and bobbed forward _forcefully_ deep. 

“Fuck, fuck, so close, babe, how do you even do that, I can’t handle—handle you. You’re so g-good, I don’t deserve—I love you, love love you,” he babbled, keeping his hips still on the mattress even as Harry choked on his dick. “I miss you, all the time. You’re, you’re my home.” 

There was the guilt again, a flare-up right in the middle of his gut, that he was stealing something raw and dirty from Louis, that he was conning him. Even if Harry had no intention of giving up, would it be more honourable to—let Louis go if he wanted to go? Granted he didn’t _sound_ like he wanted to go, but—he had left, hadn’t he, had very well fucked off. And a small, petulant part of Harry wanted to lure him back with the promise of dick, wanted to be that shallow. That shallow part of him was a weeping, wounded ego, yet for some reason he was indulging it. 

He felt entitled to do some taking, wanted to take in everything Louis had to offer him, half-convinced as he was that Louis was going to leave him again. He wanted to own it all, unfair though the impulse may have been. 

He hummed again as best he could, waiting for the telltale signs of Louis climaxing. The muscles in his legs clenched, his breathing went shallow, and a high keening rose from the back of his throat. Harry bore down a last centimetre, vision going starry with lack of air. Louis arched his back and came, hard and groaning, for a near-eternity. Come roped down Harry’s throat and he pulled off, sputtering and dribbling and spitting. 

Louis moaned, sounding like his voice was ripped from the bottom of his gut, as Harry tried to swallow and gulp down big breaths of air. Louis stuttered out a broken and breathy, “The—best, so good, love I can’t believe you, this all—I can’t.” 

Harry looked up, still feeling air-deprived and spacey. Louis’ cheeks were wet—sweat or tears, maybe both—and only then did Harry think of his own neglected cock, which was hard to aching. 

“Shit, babe, you—can’t be comfortable, can it, let me care of you, let me please, I want to, so bad, babe." 

"Yeah, want you to,” Harry agreed, palming himself through his joggers, tucking his other hand into the elastic waistband, forcing them sideways so he could shimmy them off his hips. 

Louis blew him languidly, beautifully, brought tears to both their eyes and made Harry want to die and scream and leave the country. 

And Louis stayed over that night and the next, making his inevitable departure that more unbearable. Making Harry cry in the shower for an entire week wholesale. 

*** 

“I don’t get it,” Niall said, popping open a beer he’d wordlessly grabbed from their fridge. 

“Which bit?” Harry asked, chucking a piece of pineapple into his own mouth. 

“What _are_ you two?" 

“Meaning? We’re—married, we’re spouses.” 

“You fuck every week. Sorry if that sounds more like friends with benefits than husbands." 

“We—we have the kids, we have to think of them too, not just ourselves." 

“Yeah, that’s what I mean. Commit to it, dude, if that’s what you want. Let him know." 

_“Excuse me?_ Know?" 

“That you’re serious.” 

“He knows.” 

"Does he?” 

“He _does!”_

*** 

Harry was twenty minutes early for their next mediation session, shoulders tense and stomach quivering. Apparently standing his ground meant the consistent presence of a swooping in his gut, along with mild terror at the thought of failure. 

He idly wondered when he might actually be at rock bottom, and whether he should set up a pup tent at rock-bottom basecamp. He had never envisioned himself here, beaten down to some wire-skeleton version of himself, like an umbrella torn of its fabric. 

Harry shook his head, mixed metaphors irrelevant to the situation at hand. He waited for the meeting to start before reaching into his artfully worn, hand-dyed-made-to-look-old leather satchel to remove the swathe of papers littered with sticky tabs. “Brass tacks time? I’m not going to sign these, so the pretense might be a bit of a waste of everyone’s time. 

Louis sighed quietly but didn’t say anything. 

“Meaning?” Louis’ lawyer, _something_ O’Brien asked in a tone Harry didn’t like. 

“I have no intention of getting divorced.” 

At this, Louis rolled his eyes. 

“Well,” said Sasha, their mediator, “I can’t say I’m disappointed in this turn of events.” 

“You get paid anyway, innit,” Louis muttered before directing his next sentence to Harry. “What’s that then?” he asked, indicating the stack of paper. 

“Divorce papers. Wanted your permission to shred them.” 

“Shred them?” O’Brien asked, his eyes going wide. 

“I’m never signing them. I’m just not. I don’t want to and you don’t want me to, Lou. And to be honest I’m annoyed and hurt that things have gone this far. I know you don’t want to split up, and the only thing I’m left wondering is why you’re trying to hurt me." 

“I’m not trying to _hurt_ you, Christ. I was—giving you an out.” 

“I don’t want an _out._ I want my fucking husband back. I’ve never wanted out, and no matter how often I tell you, somehow you still don’t believe me.” 

“I just—I—you were catatonic for months. I can’t just _forget_ that."

“I’m not asking you to, but maybe try to fucking forgive it, okay?" 

“It’s about forgiving _myself,_ Haz, can you not see that? I did that to you—” 

“No you _did not.”_ Harry dropped his face into the crook of his elbow and groaned. 

Sasha steepled her fingers. “Okay, we’re going to table divorce talks for now and invest our time in more frequent couples counselling, hm? Because this doesn’t seem like a conversation we need to have billable,” she added, eyeing Harry and Louis’ lawyers. 

“S’not like we can’t afford it,” Harry muttered, although he saw her logic. 

“Our careers are on hiatus, remember? Due to our unfortunate tiff or whatever the rags are calling it." 

“Fine. You moved out and I’m fucking livid but I’m not putting up with this circus. It’s not happening. I’m standing my ground.” 

This isn’t about, shit, gun control in the damn States, this is our _lives,_ it’s our _kids.”_

“And they deserve to know I’ll fight for you just as much as I’ll fight for them. This as much about them as us, Lou, and I’m not budging.” 

Louis blinked once, twice, and exhaled harshly. “What _happened_ to us?” 

“What didn’t?” 

Because hadn’t they been everywhere and done everything and given dreams to kids just like who they used to be? Hadn’t they climbed as high as it was possible to climb without tragically flipping a Porsche? Harry knew he was no James Dean, James Deen, or Jimmy Dean, whoever the fuck. Old age was making Harry senile. 

“Tell me how to fix this—us, us, I mean,” Harry muttered. 

“There’s a difference between not getting divorced and being—okay,” Louis agreed. “Are we on the same page _there_ at least?” 

“You need to move back in.” 

*** 

It was a lethargic process, wrangling Louis’ myriad possessions back into their shared space—not that Harry had moved anything into the conspicuous bare spots, but Louis frankly had a lot of shit and very little patience for hefting it anywhere. 

He also refused to hire movers, instead relocating items in dribs and drabs, as though he didn’t trust that Harry was serious. Harry was bone-tired of the constancy with which he needed to insist he was serious, but he did it—merely requesting that Louis not discuss it in front of the kids. They united there, reminding Silas and Tala that they were loved and never at fault. 

“Sounds like a message I could’ve used as a kid,” Louis said one night, with a tone that belied his facial expression. It was a school night, and they had just put Silas to bed and ushered Tala to brush her teeth. 

“I’ll always love you, you know. And it—it wasn’t your fault, it was your parents’ shit.” 

“But you get it, yeah? You always did. Why it seemed, fuck, like the next step, the only thing to do?”

Harry sucked on his bottom lip and considered this. “I, like, understand, but a conversation goes a long way.” 

_“Better than words, more than a—”_

“Nuh uh. Don’t you quote at me. You’re the love of my life but I will _clock_ you.” 

“That’s only okay in the bedroom, Haz, and the not-infrequent occasions we fuck on the kitchen table." 

“Stop flirting with me, tease.” Harry smirked, but gently set his hands on his husband’s hips, shimmying their bodies together idly. 

“Literally stop, or—?” 

“Don’t ever stop.” At his own bidding, Harry shunted forward, tucking his hand into Louis’ jeans, cupping his cock. “Put Tala to sleep and I’ll, fuck, you can open me up and, and do whatever you want with me, yeah?” 

Louis’ breath was shallow and harsh. “You sure, babe? She’s been missing Papa time lately, it’s not—” 

“Then I’ll open myself up while you’re gone, silly,” Harry replied, moving his hand in a jerking fashion. 

“I love you,” Louis breathed, eyes fluttering shut. 

“Then act like it.” Harry raised an eyebrow, going for flirtatious but half-serious behind it. He watched Louis leave the room, wondering if, just maybe, Louis was the best and brightest thing in the entire godforsaken planet. 

He thought maybe so. 

*** 

And so things went steadily on, forward, unceasingly. Frequently they were good, and even more frequently they were hard. Harry was perpetually grateful, nearly to the point of tears at times, that he and Louis were _together_ being so set-upon by…the inevitabilities of life, he supposed. Hard times were normal, and Harry yearned for normal at every turn.

Normal eluded him, but that had its own kind of normalcy. Sometimes that scared him and sometimes it didn’t, but nothing scared him so much as the idea that Louis might leave him again. 

One night found him huddled in the squashy armchair in the front room of their flat, the one he refused to get rid of even though Louis refused to go near it, insisting it smelled like a hamster cage. He nursed a lukewarm cocktail in one hand, having let the ice in it melt as he—what, pondered his very worst fear? scared himself shitless with eventualities he could never prove or disprove? 

His throat was dry, his jaw clenched tight, when Louis entered the room quietly, padding in barefoot in just a pair of tartan pyjama bottoms. “Hey, my little worrywart, what’s with the face?” he murmured, curling one hand over Harry’s shoulder, startling him. “The kids are asleep.” 

“Oh, okay.” Harry nodded, eyebrows drawn in tight over his nose. “Thanks." 

“Whisky sour doing you sour, love?” Louis added quietly, warily, kneeling down in front of the chair. Perhaps he sensed that now was not the time to comment on the chair and its presence in their home. 

“Are we okay?” 

“We’re—we’re very nearly back to being absolutely okay.” 

“Am I doing okay?” 

“Yes. Am I?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then that’s it, isn’t it, that’s what it’s about. Checking in or whatever. Opening the lines of communication?” he added next, voice rising half an octave. 

“Look at you, parroting back the therapy words,” Harry said, but he was smiling a bit. He set down his sweating glass. He put his other palm on Louis’ cheek, moving his thumb over the stubble at his chin. “I’m glad you came home.” 

“You’re my home.” 

“That’s what I said.” 

“What else do you say?” 

“That I’m a penguin-man, and we mate for life,” Harry said next, unable to properly stifle his grin. 

“Oh god you’re the most ridiculous, you are, you’re the worst.” 

“I can’t tell your compliments apart from your insults anymore,” Harry replied in a singsong, dragging Louis into his lap without protestations. 

Harry uncurled himself a little—he was uncurling himself a little more and more each day, reminding himself he didn’t need to be so _cold claws and sharp teeth and tough skin,_ that other people could be trusted to protect him, too. He could let himself unfurl, here. He was Louis’ home, and a home was inviting. So he invited Louis in, one touch and sentence and promise at a time. “Sometimes that’s true though,” he added with a small sigh. “Sometimes your compliments sound like insults. And your insults just sound—mean. Unnecessarily pointed, I mean.” 

“Oh.” Louis fish-mouthed for a moment. “I can—yes, okay.” 

“And what do you want to say?” 

“When you’re here, I need you _here._ Present, for me and for the kids. I can’t have you disappearing up your own arsehole without, like, talking to me. Without explaining it. So we can get you help. So we can do whatever it takes to bring you back again.” 

“That seems fair.” 

“And give me slack. Because everything I do, I’m fighting for you, and for us, and for our life together. I can’t keep away from you, unless I think it’s what you—want. Or need.” 

“I don’t want you away. I want you right here, moulded into my lap. Forever.” He sucked in a deep breath. “And I’ll do anything, for that forever.” 

“Not just the good times.” 

“All the times.” 

“Well now that you promised it, I’m always going to remind you that you’re stuck with me forever.” 

“Good.” 

And Harry had probably always known he was going to be stuck to Louis forever, not like he’d be absolutely anywhere but there, right there against the warmth of Louis’ side. Harry had probably always known that, and Louis probably had too—they had both probably known that they weren’t separating for anything, not for _anything._

But it felt good to have someone fight for you, Harry now knew, and it felt good to find your own strength through fighting. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all do much for reading! The feedback has been overwhelming and awesome.
> 
> My tumblr: musiclily
> 
> Come chat!


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